60-Seconds with: Josephine Davies

60-SECONDS WITH:

JOSEPHINE DAVIES BARRISTER TWENTY ESSEX

Q What would you be doing if you weren’t in this profession?

A Playing the trumpet.

Q What’s the strangest, most exciting thing you have done in your career?

A When I was still quite junior, receiving a call from my solicitor at late at night on a

Thursday asking if I was free to go New York the next day to meet our client who couldn’t come to the UK because of a freezing injunction. We didn’t book tickets until 10am the next morning and were on the Friday lunchtime flight out of

London. It led to as mad (professional) weekend in

NYC.

Q What is the easiest/hardest aspect of working on FIRE cases?

A The easiest part of FIRE cases usually is working with the solicitors on the case. The hardest part can often be managing other work and personal commitments to accommodate the urgent and sometimes unexpected hearings that come up.

Q What is the best piece of advice anyone has given you in your career?

A Don’t ask the question if you don’t want the answer.

Q What has been the most interesting case you have seen so far in 2020/2021?

A Nokia v Oppo [2021] EWHC 2952 (Pat) on jurisdiction in which I act for Oppo. The case is all about which court should decide global license terms for technology patents. It raises some really interesting policy issues about forum conveniens in the post Brexit, post Brussels

I, world – i.e. where UK companies can now contest jurisdiction again. It’s due to be heard by the Court of Appeal this year.

Q If you could learn to do anything, what would it be?

A Parkour – jumping and somersaulting from place to place in the urban environment. I love the city and parkour would mean seeing it from a different perspective (while performing acrobatics).

Q What is the one thing you could not live without?

A English cheeses.

Q What one positive has come out of COVID-19 for you?

A I was able to justify buying a whole truckle of cheddar cheese (my lockdown ‘panic’ buying).

Q Now the world is beginning to open up again, what are you most looking forward to doing?

A Visiting my friends in the USA and finally managing to visit some of Utah’s amazing

National Parks.

Q Who would you most like to invite to a dinner party?

A Rosalind Franklin so I could tell her that her contribution to the structure of DNA has now been recognized. My first degree was in science and I’d be really interested to talk about how much had changed since she did hers 60 years earlier.

Q What does the perfect weekend look like?

A Sleeper train to the Scottish

Highlands, walk out, climb a couple of Munroes, camp (or stay in a bothy), watch the sun set while enjoying a single malt, climb a couple more Munroes the next day and get the sleeper train back to London. To make it perfect, there’d be no rain and no midges.

Q As chair/speaker at our upcoming FIRE UK: Welcome

Back Summit, what are you most looking forward to at the event?

A This will be the first in person conference I’ve been to since

COVID and so, although it’s a cliché, the answer is meeting and chatting to everyone in real life.